


Aruarian Flight

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: founders era [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, and then falling in love again, learning to be friends again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:40:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: Hashirama has considered, at the end of his life, how many opportunities he had to change things, how much better he could have done- how he regrets letting go of his closest friend who could have been more.Dying on the battlefield, he sees a familiar face.It may not be an opportunity, or a second chance, but he has to hold onto it, whatever it is.If he can, in this cave, alone, with only Madara, their pain, and manipulation in the background for company.





	1. want to break all the clocks and the mirrors

Hashirama was tired.

He’d been traversing the battlefields for going on three days now, and he’d finally reached a point at which he could see no Konoha shinobi for miles, all of them having retreated from the border when the groups of shinobi from the north had begun to push inwards.

Kumo shinobi had left the land charred and barren behind them, and both Kumo and Konoha had trampled the land of Frost between them in their fighting. Hashirama could see mountains of smoke rising in the distance, a telltale sign of villages and towns and homes that had been thrashed and burned until the only thing that remained was the ashes.

Innocent people. The very kind of fighting Hashirama had purported to stop when he founded Konoha, but in the end, everything was the same.

Except it was now on a global scale.

_You’ve got your priorities backwards, Hashirama._

He had been the one- _they had been the ones_ \- who had launched the world into this stage. His attempts at peacekeeping hadn’t worked.

He wondered how many children had died so far.

He was alone on the battlefield now, and the gaping space beside him wasn’t due to the lack of his allies. He could feel it better now that he wasn’t surrounded and had only the scent of decay and death in his nostrils to keep him company.

He wondered if Madara was watching. If he could see him now. What Hashirama had done, what he’d let his village- _their village_ \- become, all of his failures.

He felt as though he had done nothing but fail since- since that day. Sometimes things had felt as though they were going right, but nothing ever seemed to, not truly. The war had lasted now for over a year and he could find no way to stop it and maintain the peace. Five different nations, each of them just as powerful as his own even if in different ways, each of them with different machinations and desires and all of them clashing- he hadn’t been prepared for this when he was young and wanting to create his dream.

_Someday it will lead the village into darkness._

He wished he had someone- not his brother, not his advisors, not his jounin- someone he could _rely_ on, someone to put a hand on his shoulder after hours of staring at their maps and warn him he needed rest, someone to run at his side when he approached the front, someone to fight at his back. He wished he had Madara.

_But that’s my fault, isn’t it?_

He hadn’t been able to convince his friend to come home, just as he hadn’t been able to convince the other kage to make peace.

He couldn’t simply kill the other kage. He couldn’t simply kill entire armies and whoever decided to point their swords at his village. He couldn’t simply kill-

Why had he decided he could simply kill Madara?

_Why did I let go of my friend’s hand?_

He didn’t know why he was thinking over this now, when he was approaching the shinobi fighting near the mountains. He had to dispatch them, then head back to the Konoha encampments, he had to lead the village through this, return to his advisors, update them on the state of…

But he did know.

He was tired. He had been for a long time. How old was he now, forty-three? He still didn’t look a day over twenty-five. How much longer did he have to do this? How much longer would he live? How many more days did he have to spend painfully trying to ignore the guilt and regret?

The shinobi were from both Kumo and Iwa. He touched down and almost instantaneously had to dodge an earthen spear from the Iwa side, and they yanked him into the spiral of their battle hardly realizing there was a new contender, only thinking about killing as many of whoever their enemies were as was possible.

He’d tried to ignore how much he missed Madara. He’d been the one who’d left- the one who’d given up on their dream- the one who’d rejected everything they’d built ( _together_ )- but looking back, after the years had passed, all he could think of was how much he missed him. Why had he not tried harder to understand what Madara was saying? Why had he not tried harder to understand why he felt as if he needed to leave? Why had he not tried harder for him?

_Are you watching?_

He deflected an incoming blade from the left and ducked under a haze of shuriken that nailed his previous attacker in the side. Wooden spikes spread from the ground at his feet and skewered the Kumo shinobi who’d tried to hit him, winding back and forth and deflecting blades and back and forth and throwing knives and back and forth.

This was all his life was now. A series of battles, one from the next, dull in between, pain in his ribs as a lucky katana ran him through, pain in his feet from the acid someone from Iwa had coated the ground with.

_Do you see me?_

And Madara…was gone. He had been for a long time. Even the mention of his name brought a scornful look from Hashirama’s allies, and none of them cared when he looked pained and none of them had ever told him to do anything but forget about him. How cruel they were when he had spilled Madara’s blood under the banner of protecting them.

The Uchiha, however. They had started to remember. They had started to regret. They had started to wish they had listened. None of them were satisfied and almost all of them still, even now, eyed the others in the village with a suspicious anticipation. Yet they still didn’t regret or remember like Hashirama did.

What right did they have to, anyway? Hashirama had heard them talk after Madara was gone. He’d heard it in ways he hadn’t before. _Scoundrel. Two-faced. Barbaric. War-monger._ If they were willing to say such things, it made him wonder what they’d said beforehand, when all Madara had done was try to lead his clan into prosperity.

He wondered how it must have hurt when they chose him over Madara. Putting his friend’s name in the ballot hadn’t been an act of equality or an attempt to give Madara what he deserved. It had just been a cruelty.

He should have kept Madara closer. He should have listened when he’d said he didn’t want to be Hokage- he never should have made him see how clearly his clan didn’t prefer him. He should have given him a position after he was Hokage and held on tighter.

_So rarely did he smile, it felt as if the sun was shining on Hashirama when he did, its bright rays warming his skin and making his heart lighter. “You’re going to have to learn the Land of Bears’ language sometime,” he said, looking as though he wanted to roll his eyes as he began kicking one foot back and forth, leaning back on the desk he was using as a chair. “I can’t always be there to interpret for you.”_

Pain in his gut. He should have pulled the swords out and healed the wounds by now.

_I hope you’re watching._

He stared across the melting grass, at where Kumo and Iwa shinobi were fighting, clashing together with all the viciousness any human beings could muster, running each other through, hurting each other, and he felt so tired.

 _I’m sorry_.

The man from Iwa wasn’t being quiet on the other end of the field, with three wounds to the gut himself and raking in uneven breaths, struggling to remain silent as he made his way towards the border where Hashirama stood staring.

_I’m sorry, Madara. I hope you can forgive me._

He raised his eyes to the sky, wondering if there was a heavenly land as old tomes said there was. He hoped he could find Madara when he arrived- he hoped they could reconcile- that they wouldn’t have to part ways again. What Hashirama would have given to see him one last time-

What he would have given to go back and do it all again. To take Madara’s hand and walk with him no matter what anyone else thought or said. Maybe things would have turned out differently- or maybe the result would have been the same, but he still would have had Madara there, with him, taking on the war at his side.

He glanced down at his hands, streaked with the blood of men and women who were divided from him only by the symbol they wore on their foreheads, hands that had ended the life of his best friend.

Hashirama remembered one night, lit only by the moonlight overhead, when he and Madara had stayed late in the woods sparring, and they’d walked home together and stood in front of his porch in the Senju compound for what had felt like forever. Madara had looked at him, squinting in the darkness, had looked as if he wanted to tell him something, but he hadn’t. He’d pressed his lips together, gave everything around them a quiet glance- and said good night, and walked away. Hashirama had stood there wondering and left it in the night and gone inside to go to bed.

Hashirama had never understood what he’d felt, but he now realized that his hands had wished to hold someone he could have so easily drawn close.

He stared at his hands, hands that had never held anyone else, and glanced up at the sky again. No matter what he may have looked like, it had been a long time since he was young and hopeful, and he couldn’t help but feel bitterly wistful about the days he had been.

He hoped Madara would forgive him. He’d already forgiven Madara long ago.

Blood rose to his mouth and he let out a brittle cough as the Iwa shinobi struck him from behind, long blade sinking into his flesh and skewering him through the chest, straight through the heart, just as he’d done to Madara.

He hoped it would serve as some form of recompense. He deserved to die just as Madara had, in the same manner, just as alone and lost.

The Iwa shinobi went down when someone from Kumo struck a blow to his neck with a kunai. Hashirama ignored the fighting dying down around him, ignored the last remnants of the battle as they fought, stumbling his way to one of his trees and sliding down to lean against the broken, torn base.

Even despite it all, despite knowing he wouldn’t be there to watch the village anymore, despite the pain riddling his body, he couldn’t help but feel a bit happy. Even as he felt his pulse slow, he smiled, counting down in his head the time he had left as he watched smoke rise from the battlefield. After all this time, he could finally apologize, finally ask for things to go back to the way they used to be.

_I can’t wait to see you again._


	2. all my bones begging me to beg for you

He was close to drawing his last breath when he saw him.

Standing on the battlefield, yards away from him, looking like Death itself in a cloak that reached the ground and holding a scythe dipped in red. Hashirama thought he was dreaming- or possibly already dead- staring with eyes barely cracked open at the shade he swore looked like Madara.

Perhaps it was Death. Perhaps it had chosen a familiar form to come and get him.

Or one it thought was cruel.

His eyes slid shut. There was a moment that felt like more than a minute, his waning lifeforce shuttering, and when he managed to open them again, spurred by some strange foreign urge, a startled pain made his heart skip a beat when he realized the person was still there.

It still looked like Madara.

He would have squinted if he had any room to do it. He tried to lift his head but couldn’t; it felt as if it weighed more than a mountain.

_Am I hallucinating…?_

The person standing on the field stowed the scythe on their back and started walking towards him. It couldn’t have been Madara- Madara was dead- Hashirama should’ve known, he was the one who’d killed him.

He came into the alcove the tree made, passing by broken branches and splintered tendrils, and knelt down, surveying him with a judgmental expression. “Pathetic,” he murmured, eyes roving over the blades piercing his body.

Hashirama had stopped concerning himself with breathing three minutes ago, but dragged in a quiet, shuddering breath, trying again to open his eyes further. “M…Madara?” he breathed, his voice barely more than a faded whisper.

Madara didn’t seem to acknowledge him. He wondered if he’d spoken at all. Hashirama didn’t know how this was happening- he really must be dead already, he thought, because there was no other way for Madara to be there.

Madara, who was, for some reason, frowning deeply. He tilted his head, in an odd sort of way, squinting a bit as if he wasn’t looking at Hashirama himself. He shook his head, frown deepening, an unreadable look in his eyes that were swimming with a strange emotion Hashirama couldn’t understand. The man stood up and turned away from him, as if leaving a gruesome sight he’d just happened upon behind.

Hashirama’s vision faded. He sputtered to wakefulness again, blinking against the blurriness of his vision, and for a brief moment, lost awareness of the broken field around him.

He opened his eyes halfway, not knowing why he felt the need to do it when he’d been content to die a few moments before, and looked up. His gaze landed on Madara, still there, in the flesh, two yards away as he walked off.

A jolt ran through him. He became aware of the crippling pain in his chest and stomach, the cuts that criss-crossed the length of his body, the gaping gouge in his left bicep that had been bleeding for hours. It all felt painfully real.

Madara was still there. He was- he was _real_ , somehow, he was real, somehow, he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead.

A wheeze ran through him. He lurched forward and reached out, desperately trying to follow him in some manner, wondering if he was- some sort of spirit, or apparition, about to disappear forever. He was walking towards the forest line and he was still there and Hashirama just wanted to see him.

His body creaked and collapsed, unable to support him, and he crawled forward a short two inches, fingers weakly clawing at the dirt as he squinted at Madara’s back. He was getting farther away. But he was _still there_ , he hadn’t disappeared, he was-

He was _real_.

Hashirama had to reach him. He had to, he had to-

He coughed and spewed blood as he tried to rouse his chakra, or what was left of it, pleading with it to follow his commands as he tugged at the blade in his chest. His heartbeat was unsteady as it tried to work, tried to heal the wound still ailing it, tried to cling to life as his other organs screamed at him to _do something_.

Madara was at the forest line. He was disappearing, leaving, vanishing from Hashirama’s sight.

The chakra that had been sluggish for- for a long time, longer than just that day- finally roused and followed his commands. It wasn’t much, and it was weak, but it was something, and he frantically held onto it and tried to imbue strength into his hands to get the weapons out of him.

He couldn’t die- not _now_ \- not right _now_ , when he was staring right at Madara’s unruly hair as he was walking away and disappearing into the shadows of the trees.

The sword in his chest finally gave. Hashirama hacked and wheezed as his heart pulsed in pained relief. He reached for the buckles on his armor, doing his best to shift the back panels off his body, and his body shuddered when he managed to roll off his broken chest panel and onto the charred grass.

He pushed himself to his hands and knees, not giving himself a moment to catch his breath, and lurched forward again. He had to get on his feet.

His famed strength had left him. He could hear nothing but the blood rushing in his ears as his weakened body struggled to meet his requests, and he wished- he wished- that he hadn’t been so careless, so weak, so-

That was all he ever was. Weak. Too weak to help his friend, too weak to help his village, too weak to help himself.

 _I have to see him one last time_.

He stopped. He took in five unsteady, deep breaths, and brought one foot forward, planting it on the ground.

 _Even if it’s only to hear him say he hates me_.

He made himself stand.

* * *

 

Hashirama stumbled through the woods with shoddy makeshift bandages created from torn clothes and only fumes in his system, frantically following where he’d seen Madara go. He could have sworn the trees creaked and groaned around him, whispering in their own way, radiating a type of melancholy that was bitter on his tongue.

The pulsing seemed to guide him, but it was logic and rationality, he told himself, because there was only one way Madara could have gone, and it was south, in between the areas of fighting. It was the singular worst he’d ever felt in his life as he made his way through the forest, dogged by the pain that just wasn’t healing as it used to, holding onto trees for support. His chakra was as dull as it had ever felt and he couldn’t help but long for the days after Konoha was created, when he could feel it thrumming under his skin when he walked through the newly-born streets. When he could feel it warm and rise to the surface when he saw Madara.

Occasionally, he looked up and found a bird staring at him, always with the same odd expression, always tilting its head at him in a strange way before turning and flying away. Sometimes there was rustling in the tree branches that didn’t feel aggressive but nonetheless set him on edge. At times, he found a bigger one- a falcon or a hawk of some sort- _Madara would have known the exact species_ \- staring at him, with half-lidded yellow eyes, dauntingly uncaring.

“Did you see him?” he found himself asking it once, desperate, too tired to consider he was asking an animal. It stared at him for a few moments before hopping off its branches and flying away with a judgmental hoot.

There were blank patches in his memory, after which he always found himself waking up after having collapsing onto the forest floor, still reaching out for something he couldn’t see, and the trees would offer their sympathies and the energies humming in them would always be what roused him. He wasn’t sure for how long or how far he wandered.

It left him in a daze, hungered, his throat as dry as the desert he hadn’t seen for years since Suna closed their trade agreement- _Madara probably would have charmed them, their village was surrounded by the desert hawks, the Kazekage himself had one on his shoulder_ \- and he found himself laying facedown at the edge of the forest, blearily looking at the ocean ahead, staring at the falcon with as pleading an expression as he’d ever worn. He hadn’t noticed, but he’d tried to follow wherever it flew off to. He didn’t know where Madara was but it was such a beautiful bird- all black- he was sure Madara would have liked it- _what had happened to his birds after he was gone? Had someone at least taken care of them? Would the Uchiha have hurt them?_

It snorted at him, still just as judgmental, and sat there on its post, picking a few unseen pieces of rubble out of its wings. Hashirama pushed himself up, only to his knees, and thought to himself that if at least he ended up dying here, by the ocean, it was a more pleasant place. Maybe it had been a hallucination all along. Maybe he was nothing more than a pathetic man too old for his body chasing after ghosts.

There was…a dock. A large, branching one, made of small platforms and pathways but stretching out all along the shore with spaces for many boats. There were several docked, but no one he could see.

Except-

He blinked, and a lone figure was standing at the end of the dock, and the falcon was flying away and leaving him there. He could barely make the figure out- he could barely see two feet in front of him- but some dim, irrational notion told him that maybe it was Madara, wrapped in dark clothes as he had always worn- _except for that one night, when he’d worn one of Hashirama’s kimono for a festival, the one with cherry blossoms, and he’d looked so bright and he’d smiled and people hadn’t recognized him and Hashirama had felt so intensely odd-_

He crawled onto the dock, wanting to stand but not having the strength, and his injuries screamed at the scrape of rough wood under him but he paid them no mind.

Nothing in his life had gone right. He’d started out so sure it would, so sure he could make it happen, so sure _they_ could make it happen, and in the end nothing had. His village was embroiled in war. Even before that his life had felt duller and like it had lost the bright spot of hope he’d felt when he’d stood gazing out at the village on the Hokage mountain. He’d lost his friend, then- he hadn’t even gotten the family he wanted.

Mito hadn’t wanted him; he hadn’t wanted Mito. They slept in different rooms. Hashirama even felt detached from the child he’d sired, feeling as if he was little more than its biological donor living elsewhere rather than a father, and even if he’d managed to connect with Tsuna, feel more like the grandfather he was- when had he gotten that far, anyway?- he had no lover, no children, he could barely even place the names of the people he associated with often now. _Friends,_ they were meant to be called. Nothing had felt able to dislodge the weight in his chest he walked around with every day.

“Madara?”

The figure looked over their shoulder, and it- it was Madara, as real as he had been just a few minutes- no a few days- ago, and Hashirama wanted to weep.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, derisive, looking at him like he was an ugly little bug that didn’t know it was supposed to die after being squashed. “Aren’t you mostly dead?”

Hashirama trembled. He’d spoken. He’d _heard_ him speak. He was real. He had to be.

“I…I-” But his throat was dry, and now that he was here he could hardly think of anything to say, there was so _much_ he had to say, he couldn’t just water it down to one sentence- “Madara…”

“I don’t have time to hold your hand while you die, Hashirama,” Madara said, turning back towards the ocean, in such an uncaring tone, and yet- something about it felt- odd, stilted, and his eyes were so strangely distant. Hashirama wondered, again, if he was dead.

It didn’t matter if he was dead. All that mattered was that this was Madara- he had to- to hold onto this somehow.

“D-don’t…” Madara glanced down at him, and one of his eyes was a milky white, and Hashirama barely noticed the strangeness of it. “Don’t- don’t leave.”

One thin raven eyebrow shot up. “Don’t leave?” Madara snorted. He shook his head. “God, you must be delirious. Have a good death, Hashirama. It’s your turn this time.”

He turned around and made to walk past him. Hashirama panicked and grabbed onto his ankle, feeling a hum of electricity shoot through him when his flesh made contact with Madara’s skin. _Real_.

Madara stopped and looked down at him, again with an expression on his face that signaled he would rather be doing anything than having Hashirama bother him. “Let go.”

“Don’t leave,” Hashirama whispered, uncaring about whether or not he begged. Begging was all he had left available to him now. “Please.”

This wasn’t a second chance. He didn’t think there were any more second chances. If it was, it was a wretched and grey attempt at one. Everything felt broken and shriveled and as if he was only grasping at mangled threads of something he’d once wanted when it should just be done.

He’d started out so sure he could make things right.

He’d killed Madara to make it happen. He’d only realized, many years later, that he’d forgotten wanting to make it happen for Madara.

Madara, who was right there, he _had_ to be, his skin was cold and damp beneath his hand, he had substance, he had weight- he had to be real. There was rain dripping down on them and pattering against the dock underfoot but he heard no thunder overhead.

“Let go,” the figure standing over him ordered, jerking on the ankle in his grasp. He turned, and- and it was Madara, it was Madara, it was Madara staring down at him, apathetic, like he was a bug on the sidewalk.

His hands were trembling as he withdrew the other from holding his chest wound and it joined its partner in grasping Madara’s ankle, spreading his blood over pale skin. His grip wasn’t much compared to the strength that used to run in his veins. Madara could probably yank his foot free and stomp on the hands that reached for him if he wanted.

“No,” he rasped, holding on tighter, as the drizzle overhead made his blood run down the dock boards and start to dribble into the ocean.

Madara’s eyes narrowed. He glared down at him from under his cloak hood, and Hashirama felt tension start to build in his leg, as if he were about to pull it free. “I said let go.”

The rain was getting into his eyes- or maybe he was just crying, like the pathetic creature he’d been reduced to. He didn’t have anything else. He could have had everything. But he didn’t have anything, and even if it was broken he needed to grasp at this even just once. “Don’t leave.”

Madara stared down at him, irritation flickering in his gaze, as Hashirama laid there shivering in the rain, staring back at him with something defeated in his eyes. The tension simmered out of his leg, though it wasn’t a gift. He simply stood there staring down at him, eyes narrowed, a sword from his cloak in one hand, and Hashirama wondered if he was going to kill him. Maybe it was what he deserved, at this point. It would give their terrible story the symmetry it needed.

“Please,” he said, ignoring the beads of heat dribbling down his cheekbones, ignoring how raspy and weak his own voice had become.

“I’m not staying here.”

There were definite tears streaking down his face now. He couldn’t find it in him to care about anything in the world, anything other than this moment, about making sure he didn’t lose sight of his friend who was somehow alive. “Th…then take me with you.”

Madara looked at him, determined to lift his sword and reject this pathetic display, but something made him pause.

He stared down at him for what felt like forever, and something small and minute shifted in his expression. Hashirama couldn’t tell what it was, and it didn’t feel like pity or forgiveness or sympathy, but it did feel different.

His eyes drifted to the side. They were mismatched. Hashirama wondered what had happened to him.

They landed on his wounds, bleeding through their bandages, and came back to his face.

Madara pressed his lips together. It was the same expression he’d worn when Hashirama had once assured him that Tobirama would come around, that he wouldn’t mind Madara visiting the compound and passing him in the halls soon, and Madara had stared silently at him for a few moments before turning away, eyes trailing on the ground, and mumbled something about having work to do before walking off and never visiting the compound again. How stupid Hashirama had been.

Madara stared down at him, lips pressed together, mismatched eyes distant and irritated, and slowly put his sword away.


	3. you're always here

“You all right?”

The moth crawling over his window wasn’t one he’d seen before. He felt ashamed for thinking it ugly, but it wasn’t the most attractive, a murky grey, wings slowly drifting back and forth as it clung to the glass with unsettling eyes.

“I said you all right, sir?”

Hashirama jumped. Embarrassed at himself, he turned in his seat to face Mieko, instead of ignoring her for the wildlife outside. “Sorry,” he said, sheepish, making her roll her eyes.

“You know, you’re the reason why Tsunade never does her homework anymore,” the woman continued, hands in the pockets of her flak jacket, chewing on the chopstick that wasn’t in her bun. “Every time you babysit her you get distracted and always end up letting her play. Or should I say, you let her distract you.”

Hashirama smiled apologetically. “Is she still pretending to play poker with her dolls?”

“She’s betting pebbles,” Mieko said with a scowl, drawing a weak laugh from him. “If she develops an addiction, I’m suing you for every penny she loses.”

“Please don’t- Tobirama’s still angry at me for what I lost last week.”

Another eye-roll. She stepped forward and slapped a folder on the desk, reaching up to fiddle with her chopstick when she’d let go of it. “You dig your own grave, you know. Anyway, I have the reports from this month. Mama needs them back ASAP.”

Hashirama glanced at the folder and winced. More paperwork. He was so tired his spine was aching from sitting at his desk for so long, but he supposed he had nothing better to do, in his empty house with his empty room.

“I’ll get started,” he said, tugging the folder over to the space in front of him and flipped it open. An ocean of text in the tiny font created by the security division’s typewriters assaulted his eyes. He swam in it for a moment, a boat with holes in the bottom lost at sea, and mustered up another smile as he glanced up at her. “Tell your mothers I’ll have it back…tomorrow afternoon.”

Better tomorrow afternoon than the morning. There was no use slicing his own heel. He’d found himself drifting lately, taking naps in his office that wasn’t as quiet as his house.

“Don’t overdo it,” Mieko called as she strolled towards the door, a bit of umber shining in her cherry-red hair as the waning sunlight reaching through the windows spread over it. “You know what happened last time Mother found you asleep on the job.”

Hashirama chuckled even as he winced. He would take even Tobirama over an angry Toka who’d come all the way to the tower for paperwork that was supposed to be finished yet wasn’t.

He waited until she’d closed the door and sighed, slumping a bit as he glanced down at the forms. The tiredness was washing over him again. It was always a steady trickle, but some days it felt like a tidal wave, flooding into his nostrils and drowning him.

A tapping noise caught his attention. He glanced at the window, pausing when his eyes fell on the moth, still in the same spot as it stared at him, unnaturally large eyes empty and soulless and looking through him at something he was feeling rather than something on his outside appearance. It was tapping one wing against the glass, steady, rhythmic, not moving its gaze from him, with a chillingly human-like quality, as if it could open its jaws at any moment and speak to him.

The tapping stopped as it let its wing rest against the window. It stared at him for a moment more. Then it fell, with no preamble or warning, simply dropping from the window dead to thump against the roofing outside.

He was left to sit there, disturbed, something cold forming a pit in his stomach as he forgot about everything else; the paperwork, the loneliness, the exhaustion. All he could think of was its lifeless eyes even before it had died.

He awoke with a start, dragging in a breath of cool air, his body seizing up out of habit. The air was chilled, in a much more real way, and he struggled to comprehend where he was for a few moments.

Somewhere to his left, someone snorted. “Finally awake?”

Hashirama froze. Wide-eyed, he glanced to the side, staring into the darkness as a figure stepped out of the shadows. It didn’t do much for revealing his face, covered by dark hair, surrounded by the hood of a cloak. Nonetheless, it was enough, and the voice made it all come rushing back; war, desperation, a dock somewhere in the Land of Fire- or maybe elsewhere.

“Madara?” he breathed, not daring to move lest he break the illusion. The other man rolled his eyes, so familiar, moving further out of the shadows until he stood before the bed Hashirama was laid out on.

“I must say, I’m not impressed,” he said, haughtily, chin tilted up and gaze uncaring, just like Hashirama remembered. “You really let yourself go, Hashirama. Dying from a few little wounds?”

Hashirama blinked. His throat felt dry, and he again found himself at a loss for what to say. Madara was here, right in front of him, and it felt- so much more intimidating than he thought it would.

But he was still confused. “Am…am I dead?” he queried, glancing around the room with no small amount of befuddlement showing on his face.

Madara snorted again. He folded his arms, again looking just as Hashirama remembered- clothed in a plain navy mantle, wearing his gloves. But there were changes. He was so closed off, so distant. “I think we’ve already established you’re not. Do you have any other inane questions?”

Hashirama sat there for a moment and swallowed. He let his eyes drift again, settling on Madara’s collar. “How…” His brain was still trying to get into gear, but there was one question on the forefront of his mind. “How are you…”

“Alive?” It was- startling, in a way, how easily Madara seemed to speak of it, and he still looked just as uncaring when Hashirama looked at his face again. “Wondering how I didn’t die when you stabbed me in the back?”

Hashirama flinched. It hadn’t even sounded like Madara had been trying to guilt him- to do anything- he was simply stating it, as if Hashirama was silly for not knowing in the first place. “I…”

“There are many ways to elude death. In all the strange things you’ve seen in the world, I think it is among the least,” Madara told him, straying towards the other side of the room. There was cold metal around Hashirama’s left ankle, the bite of it making itself known as he sat awake longer, but Madara didn’t address it- didn’t address anything- acting as if he hardly cared about his presence at all. He was staring at some far-off point through the doorway to the right, standing at an angle that didn’t entirely leave his back open to him. “Do the specifics particularly matter, or do you wish to know so you can prevent any other such deserting friends from doing the same when you slay them?”

Hashirama’s mouth felt like a desert. Madara again hadn’t seemed as though he was trying to wound him, only speaking as if what he said was such a fact even Hashirama must have seen it, and it hurt, in some deep way, to know Madara thought he was- that he would- and yet, he’d proven that true.

“What- what are you doing?” he asked, instead of voicing the other thoughts on his mind, and it came out as stilted and awkward as it sounded in his mind.

Madara turned and raised an eyebrow at him. Hashirama couldn’t stop imagining when they’d been together, friends, when they’d spoken like this amicably. It was so much easier when they weren’t in battle.

“What am I doing? What sort of question is that?” He waved one hand to encompass the room that Hashirama was beginning to understand was a prison he’d asked to be put into.

The light from the lantern on the table beside his bed cast itself over the walls, cold stone, and he could feel the chain on his ankle leading off the mattress, most likely only just long enough to allow him to use the portion of the room on his left side.

“Living my life, Hashirama,” Madara went on, sounding so bland and stale it made Hashirama want to shrivel up a little. It felt like an accusation and a mockery rolled into one. “You asked to be brought here. What are _you_ doing?”

Hashirama feebly opened his mouth and found he had no answer. Madara stared at him, waiting for an answer, and he couldn’t help but wonder why the Uchiha was bothering to talk to him at all, if he had anything at all better to do.

“What…will you do with me?” he asked, feeling a little hollow. He couldn’t find it in himself to protest at whatever answer awaited him. At this precipice, what point was there in living or dying?

Madara let out a condescending tut, drumming the fingers of his right hand on his folded arm. He seemed almost let down by the conversation and its lack of topic. “I don’t care what happens to you. You begged so pitifully to come with me, but make no mistake, I spared you on a whim. It’s ironic, isn’t it,” he said, letting his eyes drift to the bandages on Hashirama’s chest, not phrasing it as a question. “After everything that happened, you’re here now, at my mercy. I could kill you as easily as it would be to cut a blade of grass in half. Does that unsettle you?” His eyes flicked up to meet Hashirama’s, but he couldn’t say it did, and something in the Uchiha’s gaze seemed to settle in veiled dislike. “It would make sense. I am your enemy not to be forgiven, remember?”

A lump formed in Hashirama’s throat. Out of everything, the reminder was what made his stomach flip, what made a pit of guilt nest itself in his chest. He wanted to say he had. He wanted to say his words hadn’t been true, but he knew that was an insulting offense. He wanted to ask for forgiveness.

But Madara was cold. He’d been warm, once, warmest to Hashirama, and he had squandered it.

“But you’ll probably die anyway,” Madara continued, back to sounding bored, still staring at his bandages. “And you might be of some use. I’ll let you cling to life here if you want to so badly and last for a few weeks. An even more pathetic end than that battlefield.” An empty smile curled over his lips. He looked Hashirama in the eye, silently mocking him. “Is that what you wanted?”

Another prolonged moment passed. When it became clear Hashirama would say nothing- what could he say? What could he possibly say to Madara after all this time?- the Uchiha turned on his heel and strode out, through a cave hall that had no door.

Leaving him alone, in a cold cave chamber, with no sound to keep him company but his own breathing.

He could hardly think of anything. The ceiling was subdued and grey and uniform, sporting only a few tiny cracks, and he couldn’t think of anything. He still felt like he was dreaming- as though this was all some sick vision in Purgatory on his way to the afterlife- as if what was real was slipping away under his fingers like sand in an hourglass.

He tilted his head and glanced at the corner of the room he’d been allowed, at the plainness, at the light flickering over the table that separated it from the walkway in the room, as if to box him in further when he was already chained.

Silence, an empty room, just like his own house. What difference was there from being in this jail than the one in his own home?

This one belonged to Madara, who he’d wanted to speak to again for a very long time, but it still felt just as empty.

He strained and tried to listen for any sounds of Madara moving around within the cave. He didn’t know how large it was, but he couldn’t hear a thing. Some cutting sense of disappointment bothered him.

There was emptiness everywhere he looked. He wondered, for the thousandth time, how he had ever thought he could fix anything.

* * *

 

He didn’t know when he’d drifted to sleep, but at some point, a sound woke him in the night. He supposed it was night, anyway.

He sat up, ignoring the creak in his bones, gazing around for the source of the noise as he blinked a weary fog from his eyes. It was unnerving in how unidentifiable it was- it sounded vaguely familiar, but too strange to immediately place.

He glanced down at the floor to the right of the bed and startled when he noted the dead moths a few feet away from the bedframe. A few others were clustered around them, making eerie chittering noises as they ate away at the dead ones, and he could see more scurrying about in the shadows near the wall.

A thump against his leg made him jerk. He ripped the blanket he’d been supplied off his body and grimaced when he found one gnawing on his trouser leg. Carefully peeling it off, he set it on the floor, and it began wobbling away from him with an unsteady and weird gait before it dropped dead a few inches away from the rest of the infestation. Two branched out to feast on its body.

Hashirama’s grimace deepened. They were just like the one from his previous dream. Mottled grey all over, with bulging eyes that made him feel on edge.

It became apparent that the more they ate, the quicker they died, feeding a cycle of death as they swarmed each new body to chew on. The longer he stared the more off-balance he felt.

He finally had to look away, discomfited, his stomach churning as their chewing filled his ears.

He jerked awake in bed, panting as he laid there staring at the dark ceiling. The lantern had gone out; he would have to relight it with the matches that sat by its base.

Relieved to find it had only been a dream, he let himself relax a bit, calming down as he laid in the dark. Neither wakefulness or sleep felt enjoyable, but he would take what reprieve he could.

A quiet hiss caught his attention. He turned his head towards the doorway, holding his breath as he tried to listen, not thinking twice about eavesdropping. He could hear Madara speaking, obviously trying to be quiet, sounding irritated and incensed- much more so than he had during their conversation.

“…you’ll do as I say,” he snapped out, barely audible. “-my decision.” Hashirama’s brow crinkled. It sounded as though Madara was speaking _to_ someone. “-things to worry about. Leave it.”

A low, disquieting noise followed, from a throat Hashirama knew had to be different than Madara’s. What he could only describe as the faintest slithering noise followed. A chill swept through him, for multiple reasons he couldn’t place, and he swallowed but didn’t allow himself to breathe.

He listened for more, but he could only hear footsteps that must have been Madara’s that soon became faint. He was left in the relative quiet again.

Hashirama slowly let himself relax into the mattress and breathed out. He’d thought that Madara was alone- but…he supposed it made sense for him to have…allies. He supposed he was arrogant to assume Madara had no one. Perhaps it was a- a friend of his.

The disturbed feeling in his gut told him it wasn’t a friend. Something about it all wasn’t right. Concern nestled itself in his mind, concern for- for _everything_ , anything, nothing, he didn’t know.

Things weren’t right. But when had they ever been?

He let himself sink into empty oblivion again instead of thinking of it. All through his sleep, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was steadily crawling up his leg to feast and die, even though he knew nothing was there.


	4. crash&burn

This was unexpected. It was an annoyance, an inconvenience- but a small bump in the road, nothing more. It would not last.

Hashirama’s body was crisscrossed with wounds, the worst of which being the stab wound in his chest, and he would be dying soon.

The hollowness in his chest rang again.

Madara scowled down at the parchment his falcon had brought him. He was in a sour mood, and he wanted to think it was simply because of the overall state of things. Not because of Hashirama. Hashirama couldn’t do that to him anymore.

Madara felt nothing about him. He’d gone to the battlefield out of curiosity, maybe misguided, but he didn’t care. The oddness and the hollowness swirling in his mind were not his, were not because of Hashirama. Madara had felt- _so hollow_ watching him, as the spectator he was, and he couldn’t stop thinking of the irony of it all. It was like watching a play being put on.

Hashirama was an annoyance. An insect. Madara did not care, and that was the point that made Hashirama’s presence in his premises irritating- he would rather not spend time on such useless things, things that would be useless even if he did care, things that would be useless no matter how much he did or did not care.

“I find it interesting you chose to save him instead of leave him to die, Madara,” Zetsu whispered from the shadow in the doorway of his room, or what passed as his room in a cave complex. “Don’t tell me you have feelings about it.”

“He could be of interest. Nothing more,” Madara replied, flipping his parchment and rolling it shut. He leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes at it, feeling another flush of ire. “In case you haven’t noticed, my eyes have yet to change.”

Zetsu hummed. He seemed to like staying in the shadows. Madara had come to think that Zetsu was not simply just his will- he was his will, and his darkness, the part of him that strayed in the shadows. “He could be useful, master…he is far broken. You could bend him to your will.”

Madara snorted. There was no other appropriate reaction to such a suggestion; and what a silly suggestion it was. “Hashirama isn’t like the others,” he told the being across his room, not with any amount of heat. “He will not be manipulated and changed. He’s of a different breed. Even as pathetic as he is now.”

If there was one thing Madara knew, it was that Hashirama was stubborn. He would never change. He wouldn’t listen. He and Hashirama would never agree; they had always been fated to be perpetually stuck on different pages of the same story.

“No,” he continued, picking up the glass sitting on the edge of his desk and watching the bubbles floating on the surface. He watched one dance from one side of the glass to the other, swirling around as the liquid settled. “I won’t bother with him. He’ll be dead soon anyway.”

There was a pregnant pause. He heard Zetsu shifting, such an easy sound to pick up after years of living in this cave.

“As you wish,” his manifestation finally whispered, because Madara had already told him he wasn’t to kill Hashirama. If anyone was going to kill Hashirama, it was going to be _him_. It was the only thing worthy enough.

A bit of dampness dribbled onto his thigh. Confused, he glanced down, wondering at the trail running down his glass. His hand was shaking.

Letting out an irritated noise under his breath, he sat the thing down without taking a sip and went back to reading the various reports his birds had brought him.

He ignored how he felt so hollow. He’d learned to some time during the first three years.

* * *

 

It was…a while before Hashirama saw Madara again. He didn’t know how long he sat there in bed, with hardly the motivation or energy to get up and even inspect the room, trailing his fingertips along the bedframe rail. It was made of cold metal.

At some point, he heard quiet steps in the hall to his right, though he’d heard noises emanate from the hall to his front and to his left before. Madara emerged, not wearing his cloak anymore, wearing some sort of very plain dark robe with draping sleeves and a very wide sash around his waist. He seemed to be heading for the table in the far corner, hosting a few glass mixing devices, and if the expression on his face was anything to go by, he was ignoring him.

Hashirama sat up, ignoring the throbbing in his chest. He watched Madara work, nimble fingers setting a satchel into a pot to infuse and pouring a pale green liquid into a canteen from another container. He opened his mouth and paused, mouth dry, and he felt a string of something like hurt at being ignored. Madara could at least…

He didn’t know.

“M…Madara?”

Madara paused. He’d been acting as if he didn’t exist, but he turned to look over his shoulders, familiar bangs concealing one of his eyes, and he narrowed the visible one. “What?” he asked, not sounding particularly incensed but mildly impatient.

Hashirama’s mind felt like it had been stuffed too tight, as if there was some invisible pressure weighing down on him; he swallowed before going on, trying his best to look Madara in the eye. “Can- can we- can we talk?”

Madara’s eye narrowed further. Hashirama couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or confused. There had been a time when he had been able to tell without a word. “What do we have to speak of?”

Hashirama floundered for an answer. He couldn’t help but feel that Madara should _know_ \- how could he not have just as many things to say? “About…what happened?”

Madara withheld a snort. He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. “What’s there to speak of, I say again?” he asked, tone mildly scornful. “It’s rather cut and dry, don’t you think? I left your village, we fought, you killed me, though, as we can both see, you failed. What do enemies have to speak of?”

Hashirama did his best not to sink back down into the bed again. “I…” Madara watched him, expectant, and he licked his lips and barreled on hoping it wouldn’t get him a kunai in the tongue for it. “I’m sorry.”

Disbelief flashed across Madara’s face. He stared at him, for several long, long moments, and spoke with no hesitation, despite how dumbfounded he looked. “You’re _sorry_?”

“I’m sorry,” Hashirama repeated, feeling desperation rise. “I’m sorry that I-”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Madara interrupted him, his face twisting into a snarl that made Hashirama flinch. “Don’t insult me. And don’t make a fool of yourself, Hashirama, for once it doesn’t look good on you.”

He turned on his heel and made to storm out of the room, clearly furious, but now that he’d started Hashirama couldn’t imagine leaving it further. There were so many things he _had_ to _say_. “Madara! Wait!” Madara did wait, pausing and looking at him, but he only looked angrier.

“What,” he began, tone low and controlled despite the stormy look in his eye, and that was possibly scarier than if he had yelled. Hashirama had seen him throw countless fits but even he knew that pushing Madara to the point of calm anger was quite possibly the worst idea that side of Fire Country. “Could you have to apologize for?”

“I…I’m sorry that I…” Hashirama had spent hours going over what he wanted to say and yet, when it came time to say it, he found himself lost. There were many things he wanted to say he was sorry for- how could he condense it down to a sentence’s worth? “I didn’t try harder for you.”

Madara’s head jerked back as if he’d slapped him. The look in his eye darkened; his expression curled further. Hashirama couldn’t tell what he was feeling, only that he was even more upset now. “Try harder? Try harder? I’m not some keening waif that only needed the right sweet words worth nothing from you to be ‘saved.’ What do you take me for?”

Hashirama stared. That hadn’t been what he meant at all, but it had turned out spectacularly bad. He cringed, averting his eyes, staring at the floor somewhere by Madara’s feet. “I- I’m sorry-”

“No, Hashirama, you wanted to talk,” Madara interrupted, his drawl full of nothing but mockery as he walked closer- closer than he’d gotten previously, close enough to drape his hands over the end of the bedframe, close enough to make Hashirama draw back and swallow in nervousness- and narrowed his eye, lips curled into a sneer. “So let’s talk. What exactly are you sorry for? Not _saving_ me? Killing me? Not listening to a damned thing I said? How has it all gone for your pretty little play village, by the way?” Hashirama flinched, not responding, and he raised his voice. “Well?”

Hashirama’s heart pounded in his chest. It wasn’t because he thought Madara would hurt him- although he didn’t know if he would care if Madara did. It was time to speak his shame, to the single person who deserved explanation the most. He felt- terrified. “You were right,” he whispered, bowing his head.

Madara let out a dissatisfied noise. “Have you finally realized your efforts were worthless?”

“It wasn’t all worthless!” Hashirama cried, because- even after everything- even after what he’d said- there was still some small part of him that pulsed with pain when Madara said such things about the dream they’d built together. “There is good that’s come from it!”

Madara stared at him in derision, not even attempting to counter his point. “I guess I wouldn’t know, would I?” he asked, sounding rhetorical. “It isn’t our village; it is _yours,_ after all. You didn’t even just kill me. You ripped me out of it by the roots. The only thing your precious, beloved citizens know me as is a hateful warmonger who betrayed you for no reason,” he snarled, visible eye shining with such a furious light it made a stone drop into Hashirama’s stomach. “You took away everything I did- all of that wasted effort- all traces of me. So wouldn’t I be the better authority on the darkness that’s spread from your little experiment?”

The silence of the cave was louder than Madara himself as Hashirama sat there. He stared at his hands, feeling dampness hover in his eyes, knowing that Madara was right. “I never meant for that to happen,” he whispered, but it was a pitiful excuse if he’d ever heard one. “I swear I didn’t.”

Madara was quiet for a moment. “Does anyone even know I named it?” he said, in a more hushed voice, such a blatant change yet sounding no less angry, and Hashirama cringed again, sitting there in shame and humiliation at his failings. The silence was all he needed. “Of course not.”

He pushed off the bedframe, stepping across the room, turned away from him yet at such an angle his back wasn’t to him. His eyes focused on the flame above the far doorway.

They were both quiet for a long time.

“We’re enemies, Hashirama,” he said after a minute, in a more level tone, lacking the anger but no warmer because of it. “You said it yourself. What do you want?”

He seemed to be asking more than just what Hashirama wanted at that single point. Hashirama could feel it; he was asking why he’d begged and pleaded to be brought there in the first place, why he’d tried so hard, why he was _there_.

He didn’t know.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I just- wanted to die, but then…”

 _Then I saw you_.

Madara snorted again. It was softer, this time, less derogatory, but again- no warmer. “Have you realized the futility of reality? That no matter how hard you try and how much you dream the result is the same? You helped bring war to a worldwide scale- that wasn’t particularly your fault; anyone could have prompted it. But don’t you see you’re just one cog in a machine? The cycle of hatred will never stop. This war will breed more enemies of your village than you can comprehend, and they’ll go on to teach their children to hate Konohagakure, and it will never stop. Only man will speak of peace while sharpening their knives behind their backs.” His eyes landed on Hashirama again. He felt rooted to the mattress, unable to move, thinking, with a bit of shame, again, he’d had these same thoughts before. “And people will suffer, just as I did. It will never stop. That’s why I’ve decided to change it.”

The speech was depressing, but Hashirama could still detect the change behind Madara’s words. “Change it how?” he asked, eyeing him warily.

Madara met his gaze. His eyes were empty, distant, frighteningly so. The last time Hashirama had seen his eyes like that had been when he had seen the Eternal Mangekyo staring across the battlefield at him and Izuna gone from Madara’s side.

“There were many things I learned from the Uchiha Tablet,” he said, in such an average tone of voice it seemed at odds with his next words. “Including a jutsu that will finally end the world’s suffering and usher it into peace. The creation of a creature on par with a god, formed by the tailed beasts, whose power can be used to cast an eternal genjutsu over the world. Every person will see their deepest desires and live out their life happily in the world of sleep.”

Hashirama’s mouth hung agape. It was- it didn’t even sound like a real idea. It was fantastical, unreal, ridiculous- and Madara seemed completely serious.

Something deep inside him cried out against it.

“You can’t…you can’t just force it on the world,” he stammered, feeling thrown more off-balance than he had the entire conversation.

Madara raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh? And your methods have been better?” he asked, gesturing with one hand as if to encompass Konoha. “How many people have died so far? How many people will die?”

Hashirama’s mouth clicked shut. He didn’t have anything to counter that with. The shame settled in again.

Madara was right- he had failed. He had failed to keep war from breaking out; failed at keeping people from dying. There had to be a compromise between his failed peacekeeping and Madara’s fantastical scheme and yet he could not find it. What right did he have to talk about anything?

An overwhelming sense of tiredness rushed over him. He was exhausted, old- how old was he now? Forty-six? Fifty? He couldn’t even remember, the years had passed by so quickly and yet so slowly- he was no longer the youth who thought he could accomplish everything he set his sights on.

His stomach growled. He’d yet to eat for who knew how long.

Madara stared at him for a moment more. He finally let out a derisive sneer and turned away, walking towards the doorway. “Don’t bother me, Hashirama. I agreed to bring you here. I didn’t agree to be your nursemaid.”

Hashirama watched him go, sorrowful, and continued to stare long after the room had fallen silent.

Nothing was right. The world- Madara- anything. All Hashirama wanted was for it to be over. He almost wished he really had died on that battlefield, chalking Madara up to be a hallucination.

He slowly laid back down, his injuries pulsing, and closed his eyes. The moths hounded his sleep again, the infestation back, but this time he found himself sitting in front of a mirror, deceptive in its ornateness, watching them crawl from his mouth and bulge against his skin.

When he awoke there was a metal plate of food on the bedside table on his right. Though he didn’t know who had put it there, he doubted it had been Madara.


	5. watch you devour, mistake me for bread

“You lost your temper, Madara.”

“Shut up,” Madara snarled, shoving the box of herbs he’d been rooting around in back into the crudely formed cabinet he’d taken it from. Somewhere behind him, one of the pale humanoids that had spawned from the statue stared at his back, silence speaking louder than words.

The box slammed into the wall on the far side of the cubby with enough force to shake its contents. Irritated, he went about making a poultice for a minor cut one of his hawks had incurred.

Deep down, he knew White Zetsu was correct. He had tried so hard to be indifferent, and yet- and _yet_ , Hashirama, in his infuriating, maddening way, had still managed to make him feel something. It was an angry, nasty feeling, but it was a feeling.

All he’d been able to focus on was how- how _angry_ he was, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from demanding his answers.

Scowling, he wrenched another box from a cabinet, glancing down when a moth came tumbling out. It fluttered onto the floor and went wandering off into a shadow. He was sure he’d put cedar blocks in all his storage bins.

“Zetsu,” he said, his annoyance clear in his voice, not bothering to differentiate in who he was addressing. Both would get the message anyway. “I’ve already told you not to go into his room. I’m the only one who goes in there. Don’t wander near enough you can hear either. I don’t want any irritations.”

There was a shifting noise Zetsu seemed to always make when he nodded. “Of course, Madara,” he rasped, and went wandering in the same direction the moth had, towards the larger room the statue was held in.

Madara slammed the last of his ingredients down. The most irritating aspect of it was, he wasn’t even most frustrated at Hashirama- it was himself who he found vexing. He shouldn’t have been letting himself be affected this much.

It was his own stupidity that caused it. He thought of his mirror, of every time he inevitably ended up sitting before it when the moon was high, and gritted his teeth. The same deep sense of shame took ahold of him every time he thought of it, yet- yet many times over the years, it had been the only thing that had staved off the loneliness.

_(Sometimes he’d wished he could go back.)_

There was no going back. This reality was permanent, unlike the moldable one that would hold the world in its grasp.

There was no going back.

And he didn’t want to, no matter what moments of weakness he had that belonged in the night where shame lived.

He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Somewhere on the wall, the moth scampered towards the ceiling, where a few rays of light shone in through the tiny window with slanted slats in the room.

It all meant nothing.

He tried not to think about what his own Tsukuyomi would look like.

* * *

 

Hashirama wondered if it made him pathetic, that he spent hours hoping Madara would return. There was no one else there- no one he’d seen, at least- and the silence was deafening. Even if it was just to hear the man yell at him again, Hashirama wanted to hear his voice.

It would be a distraction from…everything. From thinking about war. From thinking about his failures. From thinking about Madara’s otherworldly scheme to stop it all.

He wondered if the jolt of dulled excitement he felt when he saw Madara walk through the doorway made him even more pathetic. He watched the man cross over to the distilling station again, again doing his utmost to ignore him.

“Madara?”

Madara paused. He glanced over his shoulder without preamble. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Madara’s body went tense. Hashirama braced for an explosion or a rush of anger like the last time. However, he just turned back around, using a mortar and pestle to grind herbs and not looking at him. “We’ve gone over this once already.”

“You were right,” Hashirama said, watching him. The Uchiha’s movements didn’t still. “The village…creating it…made the conflict of clans larger. It…spiraled out of my control. Even the Uchiha still aren’t happy. They think what you did.”

Madara snorted under his breath. “Nice to see you finally wizened up,” he said, but it felt like some twisted version of a joke in which he didn’t care for what he said and only meant to jeer.

Hashirama couldn’t stop what he’d thought so many times from escaping his lips. “It would have been better if you were there,” he whispered, watching Madara’s hand go still. Some part of him wanted Madara to _know_ ; it wished so badly for Madara to agree with him on just this one point- that they would have been better together. “We could have done so much more together.”

Madara slowly set his bowl down and took a deep breath, looking as if he was trying to keep himself calm. “It’s unwise to dwell on regrets, Hashirama. I know that better than anyone. You’re pitiful to think about such things about your enemy.”

Hashirama pressed his tongue between his teeth to keep from responding. _I don’t want to be enemies anymore_.

“I’m not your therapist,” Madara went on, in a more derisive tone than before, clearly done with the bulk of their short conversation. “If you want to stew in remorse do it by yourself.”

“Right,” Hashirama murmured, dropping his eyes to the bed rail. Cold metal. “You’re busy working on that plan of yours.” There was a hollow numbness inside him that felt so much worse than caring. At this point, how could he? How could he say anything about what the world should be like? What was the point when he was probably set to die anyway, considering the state of his wounds? “Creating the fake world you want.”

Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to bother Madara much. “Who is to say whether this world is real or fake? Perhaps my definition of real is different than yours,” he suggested mildly, uncaringly. “If a fake world produces no suffering where a real one produces an endless amount, is it not cruel to choose the real one?”

Hashirama could have argued with him, but he didn’t want to. It wouldn’t get him anywhere. Not when he’d done the things he had and said the things he had. Not when he and Madara were like this. Not when he was so tired. All he felt was the hollowness again, aching in his chest as he stared at the floor. “Do you think,” he began, in a mumble, wanting so badly, so suddenly, to hold Madara just one last time, that it felt as if it hurt, “in this fake world of yours, we could be friends again?”

Madara’s entire body went still. He didn’t turn, didn’t look, and for a minute, didn’t say anything.

Hashirama almost thought he was going to answer, but he did not. He set the mortal and pestle aside and stepped away from the table, disappearing down the hall and blending into the shadows so seamlessly it was as if he had never been there at all.

 _I wish we could_.

* * *

 

Zetsu wasn’t quite frustrated, but he was wary.

Madara’s progress had been coming along so nicely. Perhaps he hadn’t awakened the Rinnegan yet, but Zetsu had spun the web and crafted it, drawing Madara further into the darkness- making him into the perfect vessel. Cold, detached, distant; so sure he was the only one willing to give the world what it truly needed.

Then he dragged Senju Hashirama back to his cave.

He’d gone to see him die, and hadn’t even bothered to leave him, staying two steps ahead and watching him with those damned birds of his that always watched Zetsu with eerie hard eyes. Madara had been snide- Zetsu had been hoping he would kill the man on that dock.

But instead he’d toted him back to the cave, gave him a marginally better set of bandages, and put him in that room. Madara himself saw it as nothing more than a mockery or act of pity.

Zetsu knew better what it was. It was out of the ordinary. Unbalanced.

And, for the first time in eight years, Madara had given Zetsu a direct rule not to violate.

_Only I am allowed in that room._

Zetsu didn’t think it was out of protectiveness- pride, maybe, or rivalry, or something else, but nonetheless, it was a change Zetsu didn’t appreciate. The behavior wasn’t completely alarming yet in its content, but it was one thing that was alarming.

Unpredictable.

He could already see it before his eyes. Madara was acting off- even his habits had shifted. He now woke up an hour earlier just to breeze through Senju Hashirama’s room and stare at him with narrowed eyes for a few minutes. He spent more time staring into space, or frowning at the horizon outside as his falcons circled the air, or sitting before his mirror scowling, rather than working on the experiments they’d always kept up trying to achieve the Rinnegan.

Senju Hashirama was affecting him.

That was dangerous.

Zetsu had considered killing the man- his chakra was sealed, and he would be powerless. However, he wasn’t stupid; that would be much too brazen and Madara would know he’d done it, even if it looked like an accident or a suicide.

He had to ensure that he removed the problem without making Madara suspicious of him. His entire plan hinged on making sure Madara proved to be a successful conduit- unless he wanted to simply wait for the next heir. Yet that would be such a waste; Madara was unlike any others before him.

But he was defiant. Unruly. He had to be handled carefully, and simply removing Hashirama would waste such an opportunity. Zetsu now had the other heir right under his grasp.

Yet there was so little he could attempt without casting suspicion on himself.

He watched Madara make his way over to the statue to stand before it, glaring, and slithered back into the shadows. He had to influence Madara in his favor- and against Hashirama’s- now, while he was still cold.

If he had to do it slowly, so be it. The two had tried to kill each other. It wasn’t as if they were going to fall into each other’s arms weeping that evening.


	6. stick around to watch you burn our bridges down

_“Hashirama? What are you doing here?”_

_“Oh, cousin, I, ah…it’s just…that day, you know…”_

_“That day…you still- you still come here for his birthday? Hashirama. You need to move on. Forget about him.”_

_“I know it’s been- a while-”_

_“Hashirama…I know he was your friend, but he was a traitor. Come now, there are people who need time alone to mourn.”_

Hashirama woke from dreaming of laying on a riverbank, head cushioned by the soft grass beneath him, watching the clouds roam by overhead. He felt like he’d laid there for days, maybe weeks, before a soft voice had told him to turn and look, accenting the warm hand that wrapped itself around his as he did.

A moth had been perched on a flower just a few inches from his head, a bright and vivid one sporting rich orange and deep red tones. The hand around his had tightened in- excitement, maybe.

He’d tried hard to remember what kind it was. Back then, when everything was still good, Madara had kept a small leather-bound notebook with worn pages, frayed around the edges.

It had taken Hashirama a while to convince him to let him see it, but he’d finally managed it, sitting in a clearing peering at the book in Madara’s lap as he flipped through it with a small smile. He’d drawn almost every kind of butterfly Hashirama could think of, a host of colors and patterns, and moths, too.

The kind perched on the flower was an emperor. Madara had told him it was a sign of good fortune- of fate smiling on his endurance- a sign he would make a good ruler.

_(He’d found a dead one when he returned from the Valley.)_

He laid there in the darkness disrupted only by the torches over the doorways and his lamp. He almost wished his death would come faster if it would only assuage the loneliness he felt. He had waited and wanted for so long but even now he couldn’t-

He couldn’t even have his friend back.

_What good would dying do, then?_

A swish of fabric signaled Madara’s entry at some point, after he’d laid there for hours. He’d gotten up at various points, whether to eat the stale food that had been left for him again or check his bandages closer to the light, but there was hardly anything to do.

He sat up this time, hoping Madara would acknowledge him, but he kept walking towards the other doorway. A short stab of hurt pulsed through him.

“Are you not even going to speak to me?” he asked, before he could think of how wise it was, making Madara pause.

A dark eye peered at him as Madara turned. “Why should I?”

The hurt grew larger. Hashirama thought of how long ago it had been, that Madara looked at him with fondness, that he smiled at him, that he cared for him.

He had never stopped caring, even when he’d wanted to. Even when he’d done something he thought he had been forced to do.

How could Madara act as if none of it had ever mattered?

“We were friends,” he bit out, not caring that his eyes felt like they were starting to moisten. “Does none of it matter to you?”

Annoyance coursed through Madara’s eye. He set his jaw, speaking with no real amount of malice but a finite amount of irritation. “Don’t presume to know anything about me.”

“You won’t even listen to me when I try to say I’m sorry,” Hashirama shot back, curling his hands in the blanket settled in a pile by his legs. “You won’t even try! Did any of it _ever_ matter? Don’t you remember when we were friends, when we met by the river? Don’t you remember all those days we spent working, in the same tent, in the same office-”

Madara’s expression twisted with anger. It was better than the indifference. “I owe nothing to you,” he spat, making Hashirama flinch. “The effort I made- towards our _‘dream’_ \- it was all tossed aside like it meant nothing.”

“I never meant for that to happen! I tried to tell people what you’d done for us- you can’t blame me for everything-”

“I can blame you for some things!” Madara snapped, voice raising to a shout that echoed in the cave. A fire was raging in his eye, spurned by a wave of hurt Hashirama could see underneath, shining through as his mask cracked. “You were a hopeless fool.”

“You _left_ me!” Hashirama screamed, lunging until the chain caught on the other side of the bed and he was left looming towards the other side with his hands on the rail.

Madara jerked back, startled, something unreadable flickering across his expression. Hashirama noticed, but he couldn’t stop, his pain and regret rising to the surface along with the feelings of betrayal.

He found the moisture had thickened to tears, dribbling down his face with abandon, making his vision blurry. “I gave everything I had to making our dream work- I wanted _you_ to be the Hokage, to be at the center, and you left me there alone. Every day I thought about how lonely you must have felt- with- with-” He watched Madara’s visible eye, wider than before, inexplicable yet silent. “With so many people around you, yet you felt alone, and I hated myself everyday for not seeing it, not doing more, not helping you, and you left me _alone_.” _Just like you_.

Madara’s face twisted. Hashirama had seen something, something he’d seen reflected in the mirror back at him countless times, before Madara covered it up, veiling himself with a wall of fury yet again. “I woke up in Tobirama’s _lab_ ,” he hissed, Sharingan spinning into place, making Hashirama rear back as a shocked stone dropped into his stomach. “You claim you cared for me yet let your brat of a brother feast upon my corpse? Is that what you’re saying, Hashirama?”

Pale, Hashirama’s grip loosened on the rail until he was barely touching it. “I- I-”

“You didn’t _mean_ _for it to happen_?” Madara spat, mocking his earlier words. “Admit it. The village didn’t want me, and neither did you.”

A tense sort of revulsion ran through him. Hashirama knew he’d failed- so much- but Madara could never say that he hadn’t wanted him. “I wanted nothing more than you!” he cried.

He’d been expecting Madara to- to counter, to argue, but he did nothing but stare, looking some strange mixture of derisive and morose, eye half-lidded. “You were stronger without me,” he said, as if it was a fact, as if he wasn’t revealing anything of any import. “It was better for you to go on, thinking Uchiha Madara was dead, and live out your life in our little play experiment without me.”

Hashirama stared, taking a moment to take a breath, feeling it come ragged to him. Abruptly, something about it all- about everything- seemed so odd, in a way it hadn’t before, and he found himself staring for a prolonged minute, feeling as though he couldn’t breathe.

“Madara,” he warbled, and it had always felt so right when he said that name, but now, all he felt was frightened. “Why did you attack me?”

Madara stared back at him. He seemed to come to a sort of decision, growing so incredibly distant Hashirama felt as if he was losing ground instead of gaining it despite getting his answer. “I needed your flesh. I had no interest in tromping around destroying buildings and wasting my time on worthless people, Hashirama,” he said with a measure of annoyance, as if Hashirama was truly dumb for taking three decades to realize it. “It was only ever you I had my sight on.”

“My…” Something in his gut was coiling, like a tightly-wound spring, ready to snap at a moment’s notice. “My flesh?”

“The chakra of both of us is required to awaken the Rinnegan. It’s the only thing that can control a beast of the Ten-Tails’ magnitude. Just as it was with the sons of the Rikudou Sennin before us.” Madara stared at him, again, like he was a bug on the sidewalk, hardly worthy of his attention, but something about him seemed almost…disappointed.

 _The Rinnegan._ Hashirama could barely bring himself to care. It wasn’t even surprising- not considering jutsu that could escape death, not considering what the Mangekyo could do, not considering Madara.

Hashirama could find no words to say. He wasn’t sure what _to_ say next. Madara returned his blank stare for a moment and then turned away, walking towards the door he’d been heading for originally. Feeling numb, Hashirama could do nothing more than stare at his back as he left.

He paused, half in the shadows, illuminated by the flickering torch fire.

“My Mangekyo can see through your clones, Hashirama,” he said, sounding so utterly tired in that moment that Hashirama felt like he was hearing himself speak instead.

Madara left, leaving him alone in the room again, with his thoughts shouting louder than the silence.

* * *

 

This was all his fault. If only he hadn’t been so _stupid-_

Madara gritted his teeth. There were many things he shouldn’t have done. He shouldn’t have coddled his fantasies with the damned mirror; he shouldn’t have brought Hashirama there; he shouldn’t have _spoken_ to him.

He stared at his mirror, a smooth reflection of the room that most resembled a living room in the cave rimmed in an ornate silver frame, as he had several times before. He hadn’t been able to use it. Not since Hashirama had been there.

Things had been fine. Running smoothly. Hashirama was off somewhere living his life, unaware that Madara was still there, still living in the shadows. Giving himself a small, tiny reminder of what had once been, occasionally, things he would never speak of.

Now he was here, and Madara felt ruined.

He couldn’t even use his mirror. Not with that bastard there, reminding him of every time he’d smiled and Madara had felt warm, of every time they’d raced each other, laughing, of every time Madara had wanted him.

Reminding Madara- that he felt- shame.

He closed his eyes, trying to banish the image of Hashirama’s tear-streaked face, of his desperate expression in a valley decades ago, of how he’d looked when Madara had left, of how he’d looked when their fathers found them out-

Reminding him that he was, indeed, there, that Madara could-

He was so angry, at everything and nothing and most of all himself.

“Madara,” Zetsu’s voice purred from behind him, grating on his nerves for some unknown reason, “I don’t mean to be the bearer of unpleasant information, but you know it is unwise to leave him so much opportunity-”

“Enough, Zetsu, I have a headache,” Madara interrupted him, rubbing his temple. He saw Zetsu tilt his head in the mirror.

“Of course,” he said, after a moment of thinking, yet he went on still. “But when it assuages- you should perhaps consider setting up a few safeguards-”

“I said enough, Zetsu!” he snapped, whirling around and activating his Sharingan out of sheer annoyance. His mood was sour and he was not keen on speaking to anyone or anything.

Zetsu jerked back, the wheedling smile he’d had on dropping, and he nodded. Without saying another word, he turned and disappeared into the darkness, heading to a different part of the cave where the statue lived. The damned statue made from Hashirama’s cells that looked like Hashirama.

 _Damn him_.

Madara could never get away from him, even in death.

He rubbed a hand over the scar on his chest, breathing heavily as he felt the uneven part of his skin, the part where Hashirama’s cells lay.

_You left me alone._

“Damn you,” he whispered, looking at his mirror, disgusted to see there were tears gathering in his eyes. He had not cried for nine years and seven months. He would not start now. He pressed his eyes shut tight and pressed his palm against the one that could see.

He opened them again and stared at his reflection. He didn’t think he recognized himself anymore. He didn’t know if he wanted to.


	7. i miss you only sometimes, i give you real tough love

He did not feel guilty. He did not feel _guilty_. There was no possible way he felt guilty.

He felt guilty. He felt guilty because of Hashirama, because of his stupid _face_ , his stupid eyes, his-

Madara hated this. He hated feeling as if he wasn’t in control- as if he couldn’t control what was going to happen, or what was going to hurt him. Avoiding the room had produced no results, had not made him feel better, and he found himself wandering towards it, steps slow and unsure.

Hashirama was sitting up, legs over the side of the bed not open to the walkway, staring at the point at which the wall across from him met the floor. There was a slump to his posture- a blank, deserted look in his eye- it felt so…wrong.

Madara went to the table in the corner, wanting to stay angry, wanting to hold onto his rage, but he didn’t know what to say.

It was several minutes before Hashirama spoke. His voice was so quiet Madara almost didn’t hear him, and he had to turn to face him just to confirm he’d said something. He’d turned around, folding one leg on the mattress, and was staring at him with such a downtrodden expression it was almost hard to be angry at it.

“When I got back from the valley,” he repeated, eyes lowering to Madara’s collar, “I was…almost depleted. Mito had arrived- sealed the Kyuubi within herself- Tobirama had to help me get back- all I wanted was to go to sleep and wake up to all of it being a bad dream. I don’t remember getting back to my house- I must have just- we…I wanted to give you…a proper burial. Tobirama and I…argued…when I awoke. But I did. I promise- I- I made you a grave- I visited every year- more, sometimes-”

He stopped, eyes abruptly filling with tears again, and gritted his teeth, finding it too hard to go on. Madara felt a supreme rush of- of- something awkward and painful and not at all the anger he wanted. He looked away.

“I just couldn’t _talk_ about it- about you- but no one wanted to listen, and it was so difficult, and I-” Hashirama’s voice broke into a sob, strangled by the tears running down his face, Madara couldn’t look at him, couldn’t _look_ at him- “No one cared that I missed you- and I missed you, every day, and- Madara, you let me kill you, didn’t you?”

Madara wished he’d installed something with sound. Anything to avoid the sound of his own voice.

“To get what you wanted,” Hashirama went on, voice trembling, staring at him with an expression pleading for him to look back, “and ensure I didn’t know that you were here, doing this, you let me think I’d won and you were gone. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“So what if it was?” Madara muttered, eyes on the dancing flame of the candle he’d set on the table. It casted a hazy light over the bottle of mint green liquid beside it, waxing back and forth with a relaxing energy that conflicted with those in the room.

He couldn’t quite remember what he’d been thinking just before that fight. There had been pain, loneliness- second-guessing himself even at that stage…and at some point, he’d realized killing Hashirama would get him nothing. The village he’d created would only become even more of a nuisance and chase him for “vengeance.”

It was better to let Hashirama go back and keep going as long as he gave Madara what he needed, whether he knew it or not.

“Were you ever hoping- even- even deep down- that I wouldn’t do it?”

The question threw him off. He remembered being…shocked when it had happened, that Hashirama had finally done it, feeling some sort of… It hadn’t been pain. He didn’t think it had. There was no reason…

He finally looked up, meeting Hashirama’s glistening eyes, opening his mouth and pausing. “I don’t know.”

Why had he said that? Why had he answered? Why was he still here, talking, still?

Why was the look on Hashirama’s face so anguished?

“That means you did,” he whispered, almost more to himself than to Madara. “Tell me you were still hoping we could go back, we could be friends. Madara, _please_.”

_What does he want from me?_

He stared at Madara, eyes begging, and the hollowness in his chest prevented him from forming the kind of response he wanted. Tossing these flimsy feelings aside, telling Hashirama just what he could do with this- this pitifulness.

“Please.” He didn’t think it was possible for Hashirama’s face to become even more desperate, yet it did. “Tell me I mean something to you.”

_Damn him._

Madara turned aside and closed his eyes. If only he did, he would open them and all of this would no longer be there, only a nightmare.

“Damn you,” he whispered, not opening them to see Hashirama’s reaction, grabbing his candle and leaving the room as quickly as he could. He couldn’t deal with this.

He sat in front of his mirror for hours, ignoring Zetsu trying to question him about what he was planning on doing with Hashirama, eventually snapping at him again and making him flee the area- everything had been so irritating as of late. Especially Zetsu, trying to make him make a decision when all Madara wanted was for it all to go away.

Reality…reality was hell in every facet. Reality caused pain in every iteration. It was how the world worked.

He and Hashirama were the perfect examples of it. All they kept doing, despite being friends, once upon a time, was keep driving their knives into each other and hurting and hurting and hurting with no end.

There were not tears dribbling down his cheeks as he cast his genjutsu and looked into his mirror, summoning a long-buried memory he kept only for his darkest, most pathetic moments, always thinking to himself that he was only examining it, mocking himself for trusting, not enjoying it.

He sat in the grass weeping as Hashirama smiled and asked him what the next page in his sketchbook was, what the brightly-colored butterfly on the page meant, where Madara had seen it, which one was his favorite.

The memory smiled and kept on talking as he hunched in on himself. This was all he could do: fail.

* * *

 

Zetsu hissed to himself as he scurried down the hall. He had spent years, _years_ , subtly casting genjutsu when Madara’s guard was down- when he looked into that confounded mirror for hours on end- twisting, never changing too much, only nudging more anger and ire and bad moods and impatience where it was needed. He’d spent years whispering in Madara’s ear and guiding him.

He’d just been thrown out of the mirror room, chased off by Madara’s rage, as if he was nothing but a mere servant. The arrogant man undoubtedly thought that of him.

Nothing was working. Every time Madara walked into that Senju’s room he came out even more unstable, even more upset, even closer to unraveling all of Zetsu’s careful work.

He curled out of the shadow he’d been occupying, taking on a bit more of a humanoid form, and paused when something crunched under his foot. He glanced down and let out a disgusted noise when he noted the dead moth underfoot.

A few more scurried away from him, back towards the infestation crawling out of a hole in the wall on the ground. A crack reached up towards the ceiling from the breach, shuffling with murky wings as they chittered at each other and crunched on something.

Revolting little things.

For a moment, it occurred to him that incurring Madara’s wrath may be worth it, if it avoided a direr situation. Senju Hashirama absolutely could not be allowed to sway Madara’s judgment in any capacity.

Zetsu could do it now. Sneak into his room, smother him in his sleep- press down on his wounds until he bled out- siphon poison into the food those birds had been taking him-

 _Crunch_.

Freezing, he slowly turned his head, looking up and letting his eyes land on one of the perches attached to the wall. It was just outside the room Hashirama occupied, as they were dotted through the whole cave.

The perch was starting to bend and creak, burdened under the weight of the monster Uchiha Madara called his pet. The falcon called Watatsumi stared at him, eyes wide and unblinking, a moth crushed in her beak as she sat there.

She was a hulking form in the darkness, old, scarred, larger than a man’s torso. Zetsu knew that it was only a bird- he should be able to kill it- and yet there was something about it that deeply unsettled him. It had always looked at him with that same gaze, from the first day it had arrived at the cave and descended to Madara’s shoulder, with a pointed look, because it knew it occupied a position higher than Zetsu.

It looked at him as if he was a mouse.

Watatsumi slowly, almost dreadfully slowly, raised up, feathers puffing outward and wings raising just a fraction as someone would raise their shoulders. Her beak opened halfway and the moth was gone, swallowed.

Not just a bird. A bird of prey. It looked as if it was going to take him, right now, and had no doubt in its mind it could crush him as easily as a worm.

Zetsu found himself veering back. It was unwise, he told himself, to challenge Madara’s dearest, his queen, that he trusted above all else. Maybe in a few decades Madara would have taken Zetsu’s side- but not now.

_(There had to be some reason he’d named her after a dragon.)_

There was no fear in his mind as he chose a different hall to go down.

He was not afraid. He could still manipulate this all to his advantage, and a few birds wouldn’t stop him.

It was true, his control was slipping- but he could salvage it, before Senju Hashirama wormed his way back into Madara’s heart.


	8. ever seen a devil with a halo?

He hated how easily Hashirama could do this to him.

Even after all this time, the feelings he had- for Hashirama, because of Hashirama, _about_ Hashirama- were shifting about in his chest, complicated, simple, enraging, always so painful- he didn’t know how it had made him feel so happy once upon a time and yet so pained.

He remembered so many times in the village, feeling that warmth in his chest, looking into Hashirama’s eyes, trying to- to tell him- never doing so; he couldn’t taint Hashirama’s life with his difficulty and his loneliness, yet he’d ended up doing worse than taint it- so much worse.

It wouldn’t have been any better. Even if, by some chance, Hashirama had felt similarly, had kept him as close as Madara would have liked, people would have disapproved. They would have talked. Hashirama would have regretted it eventually. It wouldn’t have worked.

He still remembered, so clearly, the first day he’d felt lonely when he was with Hashirama. It was the first day he’d really considered what that tablet said.

 _It wasn’t going to work_.

There was something in him- something very indignant, defiant, in a way, something that had recoiled after so long- that did not want to go back into that room, something he wished he could indulge. He didn’t want to go back in there. He wished he could ignore it all.

But there was part of him that knew he _had_ to. There were so many things he had never gotten the chance to say. He was so _angry_. He was so…guilty. He was so- he didn’t know what he was.

He just wanted-

He wanted it to _stop_.

He didn’t know what to do.

He did know that avoiding the room was going to produce no fruit, and if anything, might infuriate him more, at both his own weakness and the static way nothing was changing.

The room was quiet when he walked in. He didn’t want to be there. Hashirama was quiet, curled up in the very corner of the bed leaning against the wall, staring at the flame of his lantern, expression hidden by the way his hair draped over his shoulder- Madara didn’t look, didn’t say anything as he stopped at his medicine station, he didn’t know what to say, _what was he supposed to say?_

He’d had countless nightmares- he never dreamed anymore- and spent countless sleeping hours screaming his throat raw, trying to make Hashirama understand, make him _see_.

He didn’t know what to say.

He stared down at the clear glass bowl on the table. It was full of a dim grey substance. He hadn’t been paying attention to what his hands were doing.

Hashirama spoke, like a pebble just barely managing to break the surface of the ocean, voice quiet and raspy from disuse. “Do you…”

Madara stared at his bowl, as lively as a statue, waiting for him to go on. He didn’t…feel angry. He should have felt angry. He didn’t know what he felt.

“Do you…remember…that time that we…stayed out a bit too late…” Hashirama mumbled, tone riddled with hesitation, as if he didn’t know whether he should even bother. “And…we’d had a little to drink, so you decided to, uh…take me to your aviary, and all the birds were a bit- a bit bothered at having to wake up, but you were just, very excited to- to show me each one, and you kept talking about, uh…how you’d gotten them all…and…”

_Hashirama had been smiling, after keeping up with him for so long, looking like he had no thoughts of leaving- their own little world contained within his aviary’s walls, just like when they used to meet as children, their own team again. It felt like he wasn’t forgetting about him._

“Yes,” he muttered, though it felt hollow. “Hadn’t felt like that in a long time.”

There was a small intake of breath from Hashirama’s direction. “Did…” The hesitation was there again; he was afraid to ask the question for fear of his leaving. “Did you feel…lonely…a lot?”

Madara tried to remember the coloring on one of his kestrels he’d had so long ago. He’d been so excited to introduce her- he was sure Hashirama would think she was the most adorable one there- she was long since passed but he couldn’t remember. He should have remembered. “All the time.”

“Was- were there any moments you didn’t?”

Madara furrowed his brow down at his concoction. He didn’t know why he was telling Hashirama this. It wasn’t what he’d wanted to talk about. “When I was with you.” It petered out of his mouth like the quietest pass of water over an incline, anti-climactic, insignificant, in a way. “Then that stopped too. I couldn’t take it.”

He was a fool for speaking at all. He dared a glance over his shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t meet Hashirama’s eyes, but the other man had closed them, gnawing on his lip as he leaned his forehead against the wall. Madara stared, morbidly, distantly interested in the way his expression twisted.

His eyes drifted to Hashirama’s hair, duller than he remembered it, and traveled down his arm to where his hand rested on his knee, tangled in the fabric of his trousers. The vein on the back of it that had always been just a little pronounced looked more marked in age.

“You were the only person I had left. I used to think that as long as you were there, everything would be…fine…” This was stupid, unbelievably so, there was no use saying these sorts of things to Hashirama now. “I was young and naïve. You aren’t a god. All humans fail inevitably.”

Hashirama opened his eyes and turned around. Madara looked away, back to his bowl, staring at the powder to avoid seeing his tears still unshed. “If- if you had just asked me-”

“Right,” he muttered, sour, “as if I could.”

“But you _could_ have,” Hashirama warbled. “You could have, I would have-”

“Enough,” Madara snapped, his voice no louder than a mutter but hard enough to make him stop speaking. He refused to let them tread into this territory, this area that sounded so much like-

He stood in silence, refusing to deliberate on any of those feelings he’d tried to cut out of himself for all these years.

_Their own two-man team._

“Do you remember,” he mumbled, using the small metal spoon in his grasp to sift through some of the powder and watch it fall back into the bowl, “that time we were on the mountain?”

A beat of silence passed before Hashirama answered him, sounding mildly strained and confused. “Which time?”

“You said you wanted me to be Hokage.” That sentence felt laughable and ridiculous, now. An enemy of the state, becoming Hokage. “Why would you want that?”

His own distant confusion hung on the air like a somber aura. He could feel Hashirama staring at him, now. “I thought…I thought you’d be a good one.”

 _Lie_.

“No one thought _I_ was a good leader,” he retorted wryly. _He’s a fool or avoiding the truth._ “Tell the truth, you didn’t either.”

“But I _did,_ ” Hashirama insisted, leaning off the wall, as if he actually cared about all this- but then again, he had always been the best at fooling himself. “I believed in you.”

 _Lie_.

Madara’s lip curled. His hand tightened on the bowl in his hand. “Then why did you stop?”

“I- I didn’t.”

Madara set the bowl down too hard and ground his teeth. He stared at the powder, now a damp mush after he’d added oil, ignoring the smallest sting in his eyes. He didn’t want to face it- he didn’t want to think that maybe he’d been wrong. “It felt like you did.”

The cave was quiet. Usually, he could hear his birds rustling around, shifting in their sleep, but in the quiet he could hear a pin drop. They were probably eavesdropping.

He could feel that Hashirama’s gaze had moved away. He expected another denial- another _I didn’t mean to_ \- another insistence Madara didn’t want to believe. Instead, all that came out was- “Didn’t you believe in me?”

Madara’s hands slowed as they stirred his paste, crushing it against the walls of the bowl, over and over as it glittered dully before his eyes.

What a goddamned inane question.

Did Hashirama really think he had never believed in him? That Madara hadn’t tried because he had? Did he completely miss how Madara felt all that time ago?

“It’s not that I didn’t believe in you,” he muttered, feeling not the anger he so desired but inexplicably tired and defeated. “I didn’t believe in us.”

He could feel the hurt his remark induced start to radiate from Hashirama’s end of the room. The man had always broadcasted his emotions for everyone to see.

“It wasn’t going to work. Staying in that village would have just been a lonely existence that would never end.”

_He says it with so much surety._

Hashirama’s throat felt dry. “Lonelier than this one?” he asked, weakly, thinking of this dark cave and how empty and how _silent_ it was.

Madara stopped. The paste on his spoon dripped back into the bowl as he stared at it. “This loneliness is far more bearable than watching how much you didn’t need nor want me would have been,” he said, after a long barrel of silence, tone incredibly dull. The notion made Hashirama flinch, feeling, for once, not quite guilt, but some cutting sense of regret- that he had never said the things he wanted to, that he had never had a chance to prove the future that he- that they- had wanted would have worked.

He had thought about it- more than once- more times than he’d wanted to admit- and desperately tried to forget about it once he woke up; nights spend alone in his bed with an empty space beside him left him wondering, wishing, if only he’d just _said_ it-

He’d wondered, so many times, what Madara would look like in the early morning light. What he would look like when he’d just awoken, still shaking off the hands of sleep, when his hair would be a mess and his clothes would be askew…if he still had them on.

He’d wondered what the years would have been like, him, with Madara, Toka, with Mito, Tobirama with their children to teach and chastise.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to do anything; perhaps Madara would have still been lost to him, but at least he wouldn’t have this burning regret that he’d never gotten to feel that reality at all.

“I really am sorry, Madara,” he whispered, feeling morose, wishing he could take it all back. He wished he could have convinced Madara to stop. He wished he didn’t have such memories as the first time he’d come upon a nest in the forest full of baby swallows and thought to show Madara and realized that he could no longer do such things because he was _gone._ “Can’t…can’t we just- talk?”

He wanted to talk like they used to. He wanted _them_ to be as they used to.

Madara set the bowl down. He stared at it for a few long seconds, quiet, seeming much smaller in the fluctuating firelight when he was silent and the anger had gone from him, and finally turned, hiding his face from him.

“I have to go,” he whispered, and then he ran, even if he only walked, because he’d yet to leave the room without running away.

Hashirama sat there, stewing in his anguish, wishing that he had at least seen Madara’s face.

* * *

 

He left the cave.

The Mountains’ Graveyard was an easy place to get lost in. Madara had, by now, mapped it out in his head and knew it as well as the back of his hand. The entrance to the cave system would go long unfound by the untrained eye, lost in the forests and nestled in the skeleton of one of the giant creatures that had once roamed there.

He sped through the trees until he could no longer see the bones that marked the entrance behind him. He wandered his way up one of the mountains in the valley, wishing he could hack into it and reduce it without compromising the integrity of anything nearby, wishing he had _some_ outlet to take his frustration out on.

All he could focus on was how _upset_ he was. He could hardly think of the plan, of his experiments, of anything- and he didn’t even _want_ to. All he wanted was to shut himself in his room and stay there until sleep took him. He didn’t want to wake up.

 _Damn you_.

It was so easy to be angry when Hashirama wasn’t there- then Madara looked into his eyes or saw the slump of his back or heard his voice and saw all the guilt and frustration and regret he’d seen reflected in his own gaze for years, and he felt like coming apart.

Why couldn’t he have just died? Why couldn’t he have just gone and left Madara to his sad, broken illusions in his mirror? They were relics of a past he would never have again, but at least they were solid. At least he knew what he was getting. At least he knew nothing would change.

_I don’t want to talk to him._

He couldn’t stop going into that room; he couldn’t stop pressing the knife in deeper. All this was doing was hurting himself.

 _I don’t want to say I’m sorry_.

There were tears stinging his eyes again, making his already blurred vision worse. He scrubbed at them with his sleeve.

The path shifted underfoot. The walkways up the mountain weren’t the most reliable, always a bit unsteady at any given point, and he’d taken a tumble down one once when he was thirty-two that left him in bed for a while. He swore when the ground gave out and clambered for a foothold, grabbing hold of some of the shrubbery further up the path, hauling himself back onto mostly-stable ground and brushing himself off.

Rocks tumbled down the mountain face as he stood there. There was hardly a breeze, hardly any noticeable noise in the valley, and the silence was only slightly less deafening as it was inside the cave. He swore again.

He turned and decided to go back. It was useless being out here. Nothing gave him any sort of comfort- nothing made the pain ease.

_I should have died._

* * *

 

It was the sound of what resembled metal scratching against metal that brought him out of his thoughts. Hashirama had sat there for an indeterminable amount of time, fiddling with some of the threads that were coming loose on one of his sleeves, and looked up when he noticed it, strangely loud and close.

He jumped when he saw the bird perched on the end of his bedframe. He hadn’t heard anything up until that point- nothing to signal its entrance, but it was there now, staring at him with large, unblinking eyes. A fish was wedged into its beak that looked…much too small for it to carry efficiently, if it didn’t want to accidentally swallow it.

It was gigantic. He almost thought its weight would be too much, even for the frame, sturdy as it was. It was gnarled and mean-looking and incredibly intimidating as its talons scraped along the metal.

Hashirama exhaled. It- she- had grown, darkened in color, and she looked so much older, but the bird triggered some memory in the back of his mind.

“Watatsumi?” he asked, whispered, jumping when the bird tossed the fish at him. It landed a few inches away from his knee.

He glanced at the fish, swallowed, and looked back up at her. She was watching him intently, gaze just as judging as ever. A furrow developed in his brow.

“I, uh…I can’t… I can’t eat this,” he muttered, apologetically, hesitantly taking the dead fish and placing it back towards her end of the bed. The falcon’s head tilted.

A low rumble exited her throat, as if she was making some unsatisfied noise, and he cringed. He didn’t know what her purpose for being there was. She was Madara’s- she loved him above all else- she probably should have hated him.

She reached down and grabbed the fish again, throwing it with more enthusiasm. He yelped when it smacked him in the face and flailed back.

“I can’t eat this,” he repeated, nearly jumping again when she raised herself up and let out a sour-sounding crow. “I’m terribly sorry-”

She snatched the fish up and pushed off the bedframe, flapping away down the hall and out of sight. She seemed pointedly annoyed with him.

He cringed and sat back against the wall. He’d probably failed something and made her think even less of him as it was. Maybe the fish had been poisoned. He felt guilty for thinking it as soon as the thought crossed his mind.

Shuffling in the direction of the hall caught his attention. He sat up, heart catching in his throat when he saw Madara emerge from the shadows again- pale, harrowed, looking a bit worse for wear. He was avoiding Hashirama’s eyes again.

Hashirama wished that he could just _see_ him.

“I haven’t the faintest clue what you’ve been subsisting on,” Madara mumbled, walking over to the other table in the room and setting a metal dish on it, seeming as if he was avoiding looking at what was on the plate as much as he was Hashirama. “Eat it or don’t, I don’t care.”

He turned aside and started to leave again, almost sulky in his manner, staring determinedly at the ground and nowhere near him. It felt, as strangely as it seemed, familiar. Hashirama remembered a time when he had been able to read Madara like a book, so in tune with the man’s moods and every movement of his hand and every dart of his eyes.

“Thank you,” he murmured, watching the Uchiha pause, the pale skin of his cheek in view as he stood there. His mouth opened, just slightly, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. He turned further away, standing as if there was a slump to his form, staring at the ground again.

His head moved, as if he’d shaken it. He ran away again, slinking away down the hall and into the darkness, leaving Hashirama alone again.

It hurt- but not quite as badly as before. Hashirama sat there staring down the dark hall for a long while, wishing he could get the man to come back, and his gaze drifted to the plate, metal, just as everything else in the room was.

A moth crawled up onto the tabletop, sniffing around the end of the table and meandering slowly about. He recognized it, after a moment, one Madara had liked; at least it was prettier than the ones in his dreams, a little Atlas.

He didn’t want to get his hopes up only to come crashing to the earth again. But there was little else he could do but try again, hoping Madara would- do anything, something. Maybe all wasn’t lost.

Even after all this time.


End file.
